Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Heart Has Its Own “Brain” and Consciousness

Many believe that conscious awareness originates in the brain alone.
Recent scientific research suggests that consciousness actually emerges
from the brain and body acting together. A growing body of evidence
suggests that the heart plays a particularly significant role in this
process.

Far more than a simple pump, as was once believed, the
heart is now recognized by scientists as a highly complex system with
its own functional “brain.”

Research in the new discipline of neurocardiology shows that the
heart is a sensory organ and a sophisticated center for receiving and
processing information. The nervous system within the heart (or “heart
brain”) enables it to learn, remember, and make functional decisions
independent of the brain’s cerebral cortex. Moreover, numerous
experiments have demonstrated that the signals the heart continuously
sends to the brain influence the function of higher brain centers
involved in perception, cognition, and emotional processing.

In addition to the extensive neural communication network linking the
heart with the brain and body, the heart also communicates information
to the brain and throughout the body via electromagnetic field
interactions. The heart generates the body’s most powerful and most
extensive rhythmic electromagnetic field.

Compared to the
electromagnetic field produced by the brain, the electrical component of
the heart’s field is about 60 times greater in amplitude, and permeates
every cell in the body.

The magnetic component is
approximately 5000 times stronger than the brain’s magnetic field and
can be detected several feet away from the body with sensitive
magnetometers.

The heart generates a continuous series of electromagnetic pulses in
which the time interval between each beat varies in a dynamic and
complex manner. The heart’s ever-present rhythmic field has a powerful
influence on processes throughout the body. We have demonstrated, for
example, that brain rhythms naturally synchronize to the heart’s
rhythmic activity, and also that during sustained feelings of love or
appreciation, the blood pressure and respiratory rhythms, among other
oscillatory systems, entrain to the heart’s rhythm.

We propose that the heart’s field acts as a carrier wave
for information that provides a global synchronizing signal for the
entire body.

Specifically, we suggest that as pulsing
waves of energy radiate out from the heart, they interact with organs
and other structures. The waves encode or record the features and
dynamic activity of these structures in patterns of energy waveforms
that are distributed throughout the body. In this way, the encoded
information acts to in-form (literally, give shape to) the activity of
all bodily functions—to coordinate and synchronize processes in the body
as a whole. This perspective requires an energetic concept of
information, in which patterns of organization are enfolded into waves
of energy of system activity distributed throughout the system as a
whole.

Basic research at the Institute of HeartMath shows that information
pertaining to a person’s emotional state is also communicated throughout
the body via the heart’s electromagnetic field. The rhythmic beating
patterns of the heart change significantly as we experience different
emotions. Negative emotions, such as anger or frustration, are
associated with an erratic, disordered, incoherent pattern in the
heart’s rhythms. In contrast, positive emotions, such as love or
appreciation, are associated with a smooth, ordered, coherent pattern in
the heart’s rhythmic activity. In turn, these changes in the heart’s
beating patterns create corresponding changes in the structure of the
electromagnetic field radiated by the heart, measurable by a technique
called spectral analysis.

More specifically, we have demonstrated that sustained
positive emotions appear to give rise to a distinct mode of functioning,
which we call psychophysiological coherence.

During this
mode, heart rhythms exhibit a sine wave-like pattern and the heart’s
electromagnetic field becomes correspondingly more organized. At the physiological level, this mode is characterized by increased
efficiency and harmony in the activity and interactions of the body’s
systems.

In sum, our research suggests that psychophysiological coherence is
important in enhancing consciousness—both for the body’s sensory
awareness of the information required to execute and coordinate
physiological function, and also to optimize emotional stability, mental
function, and intentional action. Furthermore, as we see next, there is
experimental evidence that psychophysiological coherence may increase
our awareness of and sensitivity to others around us. The Institute of
HeartMath has created practical technologies and tools that all people
can use to increase coherence.

Heart Field Interactions Between Individuals

Most people think of social communication solely in terms of overt
signals expressed through language, voice qualities, gestures, facial
expressions, and body movements. However, there is now evidence that a
subtle yet influential electromagnetic or “energetic” communication
system operates just below our conscious awareness. Energetic
interactions likely contribute to the “magnetic” attractions or
repulsions that occur between individuals, and also affect social
exchanges and relationships. Moreover, it appears that the heart’s field
plays an important role in communicating physiological, psychological,
and social information between individuals.

Experiments conducted at the Institute of HeartMath have found
remarkable evidence that the heart’s electromagnetic field can transmit
information between people. We have been able to measure an exchange of
heart energy between individuals up to 5 feet apart. We have also found
that one person’s brain waves can actually synchronize to another
person’s heart. Furthermore, when an individual is generating a coherent
heart rhythm, synchronization between that person’s brain waves and
another person’s heartbeat is more likely to occur. These findings have
intriguing implications, suggesting that individuals in a
psychophysiologically coherent state become more aware of the
information encoded in the heart fields of those around them.The results of these experiments have led us to infer
that the nervous system acts as an “antenna,” which is tuned to and
responds to the electromagnetic fields produced by the hearts of other
individuals.

We believe this capacity for exchange of
energetic information is an innate ability that heightens awareness and
mediates important aspects of true empathy and sensitivity to others
Furthermore, we have observed that this energetic communication ability
can be intentionally enhanced, producing a much deeper level of
nonverbal communication, understanding, and connection between people.
There is also intriguing evidence that heart field interactions can
occur between people and animals.In short, energetic communication via the heart field facilitates
development of an expanded consciousness in relation to our social
world.

The Heart’s Field and Intuition

There are also new data suggesting that the heart’s field is directly
involved in intuitive perception, through its coupling to an energetic
information field outside the bounds of space and time. Using a rigorous
experimental design, we found compelling evidence that both the heart
and brain receive and respond to information about a future event before
the event actually happens. Even more surprising was our finding that
the heart appears to receive this “intuitive” information before the
brain. This suggests that the heart’s field may be linked to a more
subtle energetic field that contains information on objects and events
remote in space or ahead in time. Called by Karl Pribram and others the
“spectral domain,” this is a fundamental order of potential energy that
enfolds space and time, and is thought to be the basis for our
consciousness of “the whole.” (See heartmath.org for further detail.)

Social Fields

In the same way that the heart generates energy in the body, we
propose that the social collective is the activator and regulator of the
energy in social systems. A body of groundbreaking work shows how the field of socioemotional
interaction between a mother and her infant is essential to brain
development, the emergence of consciousness, and the formation of a
healthy self-concept. These interactions are organized along two
relational dimensions—stimulation of the baby’s emotions, and regulation
of shared emotional energy. Together they form a socioemotional field
through which enormous quantities of psychobiological and psychosocial
information are exchanged. Coherent organization of the mother-child
relations that make up this field is critical. This occurs when
interactions are charged, most importantly, with positive emotions
(love, joy, happiness, excitement, appreciation, etc.), and are
patterned as highly synchronized, reciprocal exchanges between these two
individuals. These patterns are imprinted in the child’s brain and thus
influence psychosocial function throughout life. (See Allan Schore,
Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self.)

Moreover in a longitudinal study of 46 social groups, one
of us (RTB) documented how information about the global organization of
a group—the group’s collective consciousness—appears to be transmitted
to all members by an energetic field of socio-emotional connection.

Data
on the relationships between each pair of members was found to provide
an accurate image of the social structure of the group as a whole.
Coherent organization of the group’s social structure is associated with
a network of positively charged emotions (love, excitement, and
optimism) connecting all members. This network of positive emotions
appears to constitute a field of energetic connection into which
information about the group’s social structure is encoded and
distributed throughout the group. Remarkably, an accurate picture of the
group’s overall social structure was obtained from information only
about relationships between pairs of individuals. We believe the only
way this is possible is if information about the organization of the
whole group is distributed to all members of the group via an energetic
field. Such correspondence in information between parts and the whole is
consistent with the principle of holographic organization.

Synthesis and Implications

Some organizing features of the heart field, identified in numerous
studies at HeartMath, may also be shared by those of our hypothesized
social field. Each is a field of energy in which the waveforms of energy
encode the features of objects and events as energy moves throughout
the system. This creates a nonlocal order of energetic information in
which each location in the field contains an enfolded image of the
organization of the whole system at that moment. The organization and
processing of information in these energy fields can best be understood
in terms of quantum holographic principles.

Another commonality is the role of positive emotions, such as love
and appreciation, in generating coherence both in the heart field and in
social fields. When the movement of energy is intentionally regulated
to form a coherent, harmonious order, information integrity and flow are
optimized. This, in turn, produces stable, effective system function,
which enhances health, psychosocial well-being, and intentional action
in the individual or social group.

Heart coherence and social coherence may also act to mutually
reinforce each other. As individuals within a group increase
psychophysiological coherence, psychosocial attunement may be increased,
thereby increasing the coherence of social relations. Similarly, the
creation of a coherent social field by a group may help support the
generation and maintenance of psychophysiological coherence in its
individual members. An expanded, deepened awareness and consciousness
results—of the body’s internal physiological, emotional, and mental
processes, and also of the deeper, latent orders enfolded into the
energy fields that surround us.

This is the basis of
self-awareness, social sensitivity, creativity, intuition, spiritual
insight, and understanding of ourselves and all that we are connected
to.

It is through the intentional generation of coherence
in both heart and social fields that a critical shift to the next level
of planetary consciousness can occur—one that brings us into harmony
with the movement of the whole.

For more information on the Institute of HeartMath’s research and publications, please visit www.heartmath.org.

2.Holographic organization is based on a field
concept of order, in which information about the organization of an
object as a whole is encoded as an interference pattern in energy
waveforms distributed throughout the field. This makes it possible to
retrieve information about the object as a whole from any location
within the field.

3.The term “quantum,” as used in quantum
holography, does not mean that this kind of energetic information
processing is understood in terms of the principles of quantum physics.
Rather, quantum holography is a special, nondeterministic form of
holographic organization based on a discrete unit of energetic
information called a logon or a “quantum” of information.

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